The high-tech economy just keeps growing and Silicon Valley remains the epicenter of that boom. So it should come as no surprise that the Bay Area dominates the latest national ranking of cities with the highest GDP.
A new report from the personal finance website WalletHub on the fastest growing cities in America cites five Bay Area cities as those with the highest growth in real GDP per capita at 6.41 percent. Milpitas, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, San Jose and Mountain View are at the top of the list for GDP, or gross domestic product. On the other end of the economic divide is Lafayette, Louisiana, which saw the highest drop in real GDP per capita at 5.76 percent. GDP can be used as an economic snapshot of a region because it is a measure of the monetary value of all finished goods and services made within a region during a specific period.
WalletHub based its findings on the analysis of 515 U.S. cities across 17 key metrics. The data set ranges from population growth to college-educated population growth to unemployment rate decrease. The two key factors were sociodemographics and jobs/economy. The report also looked at the growth of tech companies and venture capital investment, growth in median house price, increase in building permits and rate of foreclosures.
Taken as a whole, the Bay Area has long established itself as a formidable economic engine. In fact, if the Bay Area were a nation, it would command the 19th-largest economy in the world, the Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute reported last year, comparing the region’s gross domestic product to that of nations around the globe.
Still some of the WalletHub findings may surprise you. For instance, Enterprise, Nevada, had the highest population growth at 7.40 percent while Albany, Georgia had the highest population drop at 1.59 percent.
Another shocker is that Vista, California had the highest household income increase, at 11.63 percent. For the record, Las Cruces, New Mexico, experienced the highest household income drop at 2.16 percent. You also may not have seen this one coming: Frisco, Texas, experienced the highest job growth, at 6.88 percent.
The data used to create this ranking was collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Venture Capital Association and Renwood RealtyTrac.
